TikTok, one of the most popular social networks of recent times, made the headlines again with a news that would fall like a bomb on the agenda. ByteDance, the owner of the platform, admitted that some of its employees had access to the data of two journalists without permission and even physically followed those journalists. The company announced that it had fired 4 employees, two in the USA and two in China, who were involved in the incident.
The development in question occurred after the investigation of a claim made by the popular business magazine Forbes in the past months. ByteDance, which started the investigation, confirmed that Forbes’ claims are true. Two journalists, one for BuzzFeed and one for the Financial Times, were tracked using their IP addresses.
TikTok has given the USA an opportunity with this illegal tracking!
The US government has been obsessed with TikTok since the time of Donald Trump. Officials, who said the platform was a matter of national security, did their best to have TikTok banned in the US. In fact, in the light of these developments, it has been made mandatory for the data of US consumers to stay in the USA. It has also banned government employees from installing TikTok on government-issued devices. However, the latest development has shown that all this is useless.
There were harsh reactions to ByteDance’s statements. Forbes called it a “direct attack on the idea of a free press and its critical role in a functioning democracy”, BuzzFeed called it “a blatant disregard for the privacy and rights of TikTok users, as well as journalists”, and the Financial Times said it was “absolutely unacceptable to spy on reporters, interfere with their work or intimidate their resources.” “We will investigate this story further before deciding on our official response.”
All this is an indication that the USA has new leverage against TikTok. Although TikTok has apologized for what happened, fired employees, and said it has reviewed platform policies, these statements don’t seem to have much value. Let’s see how TikTok will get rid of this issue…
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